A C++ Micro Services Module provides meta-data in the form of so-called properties about itself. Properties are key - value pairs where the key is of type std::string and the value of type Any. The following properties are always set by the C++ Micro Services library and cannot be altered by the module author:

module.id - The unique id of the module (type long)
module.name - The human readable name of the module (type std::string)
module.location - The full path to the module's shared library on the file system (type std::string)

Module authors can add custom properties by providing a manifest.json file, embedded as a top-level resource into the module (see The Resources System). The root value of the Json file must be a Json object. An example manifest.json file would be:

{
  "module.version" : "1.0.2",
  "module.description" : "This module provides an awesome service",
  "authors" : [ "John Doe", "Douglas Reynolds", "Daniel Cannady" ],
  "rating" : 5
}

All Json member names of the root object will be available as property keys in the module containing the manifest.json file. The C++ Micro Services library specifies the following standard keys for re-use in manifest.json files:

module.version - The version of the module (type std::string). The version string must be a valid version identifier, as specified in the ModuleVersion class.
module.vendor - The vendor name of the module (type std::string)
module.description - A description for the module (type std::string)
module.autoload_dir - A custom auto-load directory for the module (type std::string). If not set, this property defaults to the module's library name.

Note: Some of the properties mentioned above may also be accessed via dedicated methods in the Module class, e.g. Module::GetName() or Module::GetVersion().

When parsing the manifest.json file, the Json types are mapped to C++ types and stored in instances of the Any class. The mapping is as follows:

Json	C++ (Any)
object	std::map<std::string,Any>
array	std::vector<Any>
string	std::string
number	int or double
true	bool
false	bool
null	Any()